Technology revolution puts guests in the centre

A technology revolution is happening everywhere. Innovation could help the hospitality industry connect with guests, as Philippe Bijaoui discusses in this TV show.

Innovation & the technology revolution

I think the industry in general needs to put more efforts, put more resources into innovation. We are nearly working the same way that we used to work before. And I think there is a moment where we will need to just think, stop, look and try to innovate. And the other thing is in the operation of, because we are, I mean hotel development is linked to real estate, to business, to return, always think back to the guest. The guest is the bread and butter, is the essence of everything. And I don’t think we can progress in the hotel industry if we don’t place the guest at the centre of our decisions.
We have been one of the first company that you see apps for reservations on smartphones and the iPhones and all that. It opens a wide range of opportunities to communicate directly with the guest before even he checks in. And very soon the check-in will be also available on apps. I see it coming, I don’t know how long it will take to be implemented, we have to resolve security issues of course. But sooner or later we will have that as well. And I think that’s a sector which will keep opening new opportunities.

The Hospitality Channel is following discussions surrounding the technology revolution and how it is affecting the hospitality industry.

Technology revolution puts guests in the centre

A technology revolution is happening everywhere. Innovation could help the hospitality industry connect with guests, as Philippe Bijaoui discusses in this TV show.

Innovation & the technology revolution

I think the industry in general needs to put more efforts, put more resources into innovation. We are nearly working the same way that we used to work before. And I think there is a moment where we will need to just think, stop, look and try to innovate. And the other thing is in the operation of, because we are, I mean hotel development is linked to real estate, to business, to return, always think back to the guest. The guest is the bread and butter, is the essence of everything. And I don’t think we can progress in the hotel industry if we don’t place the guest at the centre of our decisions.
We have been one of the first company that you see apps for reservations on smartphones and the iPhones and all that. It opens a wide range of opportunities to communicate directly with the guest before even he checks in. And very soon the check-in will be also available on apps. I see it coming, I don’t know how long it will take to be implemented, we have to resolve security issues of course. But sooner or later we will have that as well. And I think that’s a sector which will keep opening new opportunities.

The Hospitality Channel is following discussions surrounding the technology revolution and how it is affecting the hospitality industry.

Do OTA partnerships add value?

Is this a relationship that is one premised upon the positives or negatives, is it a friend or foe type set of circumstances. I think ultimately what will be successful are those who can at least embrace it as a partnership opportunity, be mindful of where the OTAs can truly add incremental value. Many talk about the OTAs adding, if they can add incremental room nights, that’s definitely extra revenue you might not otherwise have achieved and that's serves a purpose. I think the reality at the moment is, yes you’re getting some of that but you’re also facing a challenge from quite a large amount of business not necessarily being incremental. So, I think it’s working on the ways that you can ensure that what you get is incremental and at the same time as we touched on before, ensuring that when we do gain access to that customer who may have arrived via the OTA channel, you try and make the most of the opportunity to cement your relationship as a hotelier with that customer going forwards to maybe cut out the OTA going forwards.

Developing talent for technology in hospitality

Developing talent is a core part of any business and what companies are looking for in a new hire is changing. Remy Merckx looks at recruiting digital skill into a company.

Developing talent with digital skill

We are not, not digital by nature, we have to become digital in order to keep up in this business. So, it’s hiring new competencies, bringing people from outside of the industry – hotel industry has been historically very close in the way they hire people. You know, you had to work for different hotel companies before allowing yourself to work for another hotel company. Is that a good model? Probably 10 years ago, today we are very happy to bring people from outside who work for companies like Coca Cola, or to work for more technical companies or agencies. It brings a completely different vision also to the hotel industry and I hope that we’ll have good results in the way we are going to develop this industry moving forward.

Keep browsing Hospitality TV for more TV shows and briefings on developing talent, recruitment, looking after staff, and digital competencies.

Flexibility is key to success in the future

We just had a discussion yesterday night at the Adnan hotel, which is an Icon hotel of course, and and, very traditional, very classical in one way, but they combine it with very new elements - a very, very hip bar, where locals are coming, and he told us that a few weeks ago there was the fashion week in Berlin, he saw that all these hip, guys and girls go somewhere else, and they came to his hotel because they say "we are living in a sort of hip environment all day long and it's very nice to go back into a sort of traditional authentic, er, environment" and that's what they found there. So I think the challenge is to be flexible, above all, because I mean the changes go so quickly that you have to innovate always, you know it's not something that you're doing every five or six years, it's a sort of continuous searching for new elements but, it's, I think a combination between a traditional and authentic and, gadgets, and new things, so this is, I think, a combination of everything.

Luxury experience is getting harder to create

Luxury experience is not as impressive as it once was in an age of technology. In this TV show Ramsey Mankarious of Cedar Capital Partners discusses challenges facing the luxury market.

Luxury experience vs Real life

Luxury, definitely, it's getting harder and harder. Historically you went to a hotel and it was better than your house. The hotel had the cool bathrooms, it had the beautiful marble, room service. Today people's homes are almost better than hotels, people are much higher level- their expectations are much higher than than what you expect, so it's not only delivering that wonderful room product, but something that's different that they cannot get at home, because I have, my house, I have a beautiful big screen TV with surround sound, coming to a hotel with a, you know, 40 inch screen isn't that cool anymore, you know, you need something different, that's that's a norm. So it's a challenge is, always trying to be ahead of the guest or consumer in terms of what their expectations are, and particularly on technology, it's very hard to do because it moves so quickly, and you do your hotel with 200 rooms, you change 200 TVs and then the next thing comes out, and you know, you just spent a fortune on the TVs, and now everyone has their iPad and don't even look at the TV – how many people pay for TV anymore, everyone has their, you know, things on their own computers. So that's a challenge, and it's very hard today, with all the technology, to keep up with it, but that's part of the challenge we face.

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into hospitality careers and other hospitality topics.

Social media profiles enable business development

Social media profiles can greatly increase brand awareness, as Dan Wakeling of Trump Hotel Collection explains in this TV show.

Social media profiles at Trump

Technology is a huge enabler, and I think also, you know, social media around that, is a huge thing for us. All of the family members are very active, in social media, and they have a lot of following, which is great for our brand and also great for our partners, because the level of publicity generated, by the family members in the different markets that we're in, and we're going to be in, is immeasurable. I think technology has enabled that in one part, it's also helped us just to understand and track what our customers are into and also able to help us operate our businesses better. It think as a smaller, slightly smaller company, in terms of the number of hotels in our pipeline, or in our portfolio, we're able to be more nimble and more with the times a lot easier, so when these new technologies come out, we can access them and roll them out across our portfolio pretty quickly. We also own roughly half of our portfolios, so that’s not always a difficult discussion with an owner to say "Hey, I think this is a great idea from a technology perspective, there is a cost associated with it, but hey, you know, we're gonna spend the money as well".

Browse more videos by the Hospitality 250 experts and find more insight into social media profiles and other hospitality topics.

Investing in alternative’s

RealStar's a privately owned real estate company, vertically integrated, we own multi-family assets, hospitality assets, student accommodation assets, ostensibly what we call "buildings with beds".
We've been involved in this space for a long time. We own primary healthcare centres, student accommodation buildings, in the UK the PRS market which is er, multi-family for anyone from the US, and hotels, so, I think all of these asset classes, as interest rates are low and people are looking for income and yield, are an attractive place that new capital is all of a sudden starting to look at.
Different business models have different requirements, so if you're at the luxury end of the market, clearly people are looking for service and that service usually comes with more people to attend to you. Equally if you look at millennial’s and the newer brands that are emerging, I think a lot of people with their phones are self-serving and actually prefer that. And so, there, um, those are interesting from an owner’s point of view, because they're much more capital efficient and effective, but actually from the consumers point of view, in many respects, preferable in some parts of the market.

Residential yields compared to hotel yields

Generally speaking residential yields are much lower than hotel yields, the happen to offer lower risk profile, there's more customers, there's higher occupancy, and generally speaking residential also tends to correlate with house price inflation, which is different than the hotel business so resi values tend to go with house price values, and so as an investor you look at both the cash flow and the value side of things. Whereas in the hotel it tends to be that the cash flow is directly correlated all the time with the value. And so, yields tend to be lower, but capital appreciation can be higher, in resi than in hotel.

About Maxxton

At Maxxton we provide the technology for, the broad hospitality sector, in particular the IP technologies so management software, to look after all the aspects of the business. It's a very very data driven technology, because it's one single database, and we have about twenty two different applications, so from a property management, going through online booking, distribution, and business so it's very very, shall I say, complete and complex.

An explosion of call centre activity

So while consumer behaviour changes, it doesn't change in the way that people necessarily predicted a few years ago. We've actually see an increased call volume in our call centres at the same time as an explosion of activity on our digital sites and on our apps, so I think that's an interesting thing; you can't put all of your eggs in one basket these days, because the call centres are becoming more of a customer contact centre and doing a lot of things that are less traditional. At least in the Wyndham world, we're find ways to use these customer contact centres more innovatively than have been used in the past.

Hospitality has become all about competition

20 years ago it was about hospitality, it was about walking through the front door and creating an experience, you first now have to get them to the front door. It's actually become very transparent and it's almost irrelevant about a brand, which is where the struggle is, because TripAdvisor's really almost the biggest brand; we go there looking for confidence and capability. So there's so many new things that you have to learn and understand to be competitive, where in the past you had to kind of take care of your hotel and take care of the customer when they walked in. So that next level of even being competitive, is just so overwhelming, I think that uh, any normal human being would go on overload and in an instant try and understand that dichotomy that's happening there. So I think it's shift from we have to learn how to be virtual and talk to the audience that way, and that's not an easy shift because it's constantly moving.